Monthly Archives: October 2016

Casco Bay Science and Recreation

Our second home base while on our schooner adventure was Hermit Island. Don’t let the name fool you though, it isn’t actually an island! Getting to Hermit involved some beautiful warm, but slow, sailing. At one point, after seeing a small pod of porpoises, the waters of outer Casco Bay were so calm the captain issued a swim call, which meant it was time to get wet! Many jumped off the Bagheera while some stayed on deck and watched the fun unfold. The waters were slightly cold but that’s expected for a swim in early October.

swim-group-from-bagheera

We arrived via the Bagheera right as the sun was beautifully setting in the distance, and Dr. Erikson shuttled us and our gear to the campsite. Tents and dinner were prepared in the dark with our only light source being our head lamps as the days keep getting shorter and shorter. An early bedtime in preparation for a new day followed soon, but not before a campfire was made to roast marshmallows!

new-meadows-coring

After breakfast the next day we again boarded Bagheera to head to the New Meadows River estuary. This estuary is restricted with little flushing of water, and therefore we expected this might be a place with some stratification caused by density differences of the fresh and salt water. As we took sonde measurements (temperature, salinity, pH etc.) heading up the river from mouth to head of the estuary we observed the highest chlorophyll amounts of the trip so far, up to 18 micrograms/L! This indicates a large nutrient input most likely from the river and runoff which fuels phytoplankton production. Along with the sonde data we also took a core sample from the sediments deep below the water. We watched as our coring device, which looks like a long metal tube with teeth inside, plummeted down to the bottom and slowly got cranked back up with some human horsepower. This core sample was smooth, similar to an ice cream consistency! There were no sand particles present, it had a deep dark mud color and was also pretty smelly due to hydrogen sulfide. This smell indicates this was most likely an anoxic mud layer full of organic matter. As we left the estuary, we had a short lecture on how large fish kills can occur due to anoxic conditions in the estuary. As the stay filled with science and adventure came to an end, we once again enjoyed a shuttle ride to the campsite. These shuttle rides were short, but I particularly enjoyed reading all of the names of the lobster boats as we rode through. The stay on Hermit island was short, but the memories will certainly last much longer!

-Jess Selva ’17

Waves, WWII (and a bit or rain) on Jewell Island

It was a gloomy, rainy morning as we boarded the Bagheera on Peaks Island and set sail to Jewell Island in Casco Bay. We stopped at various places near islands to collect data from a CTD sonde, which measures temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, turbidity and chlorophyll at various depths. We also took a core sample of the top 20 cm of the seafloor sediment by dropping a coring device attached to a cable off of the foreboom. Then we reeled it in and analyzed the muddy sediment. Once on Jewell Island we lowered our dry bags and food into Dr. Erikson’s little boat that we are towing for the entire voyage. Getting all of our gear to shore took several trips. We set up tents before it got dark and started getting dinner ready. The rain let up for a little bit until dinner time, when it picked up again, but fortunately we had a big group tent that could keep all of us out of the rain.

The following day we had lecture at the island’s Punchbowl. Here we learned about wave structures and how the two sides of the Punchbowl were affected differently by the same incoming wave sets. One side of the Punchbowl had rough waves and the other side was calm with hardly any waves flowing in, due to the friction generated by the shallowness of the bottom. We saw a dead seal that was missing its tail fins and you could see the jaw of the seal. It was so interesting, yet saddening at the sight of the poor mammal. We moved to the calmer side of the Punchbowl, where we learned that area was a big nursery during the summer months for organisms because predators could not get to them due to the water being so warm and shallow.

punchbowl

After lunch we went on a hike through the island. We saw two towers used for triangulation during World War II. One tower was about 5-6 stories high. From the top we saw above the trees the entire island, Portland, Halfway Rock and many miles out to sea. We reached a part of the island that had the WWII tunnels where ammunition and communication equipment were stored. We walked through the tunnels with many side rooms, large and small. On the far side of the tunnels, we reached what was left of large gun turrets. The structures were so fascinating and a part of history I didn’t know even existed from World War II.

jewell-tower

-Danielle Martin’19